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All iPads All Students Please Read. [iPad for eTextbooks?]

P

palpatine

macrumors 68040
May 3, 2011
3,130
45
boston04and07 said:
Sometimes I'll do this, but usually I just find loose leaf versions and scan those with my ScanSnap. I'm in law school and a good number of textbooks come in loose leaf. Sometimes I'll find a "used loose leaf" version on Amazon and you can tell the student before me just took off the binding themselves, haha. But either way, law school textbooks tend to be anywhere between 700-1100 pages, on average, and even that only takes me about a half hour to feed through my ScanSnap. I've never been able to get OCR working on such large files, but hopefully a future update to Acrobat will allow this.

After it's all scanned it goes into iBooks. Even though I don't use this feature all that much, it syncs the last page read to my iPhone, which is nice when I still need to finish my homework on the metro or something. Also looking forward to having it sync to my Mac with Mavericks. I probably won't be reading my books on there either, but I'm sure it will come in handy.

Anyway, I've been completely paperless since I started school, and I can't imagine doing it any other way. It's so nice knowing I always have everything I need and not having to carry a ton of books everywhere. The ScanSnap was definitely expensive but really worth it. I also scanned about 3,000 of my family's photos to keep them safe.
Click to expand...

OCR works fine. I just finished a 1,500 page dictionary. The trick is to only do a few pages at a time. The magic number for me (2013 Macbook Air / 4 GB RAM / Acrobat X) seems to be 400 pages. You can change the range in the text recognition dialogue box.

I'm with you on the photos (and every other analog item)!


Southernboyj said:
I can scan a book with 800 pages in 10 minutes?
Click to expand...
Yes. It depends on your paper size, scan settings, computer, etc., but I find that is about right in my case. The OCR takes a little longer, but you can get that started with Acrobat Pro while you scan something else.
 
Chocolatemilty

Chocolatemilty

macrumors 6502a
May 17, 2009
653
113
Los Angeles, CA
I used my 1st-gen iPad during undergrad and now my iPad mini in grad school for ebooks. Not all are available in my specific major, but where I've gotten some good use out of it regardless of ebook availability has been with scanning pages of books for my papers and lectures in the library and emailing them to upload into Evernote. This has been a godsend for myself and my pocketbook. This is a good option to use when there's no ebook available, OP.
 
N

nancyfromafrica

macrumors member
Sep 17, 2012
95
0
Johannesburg
hagr182 said:
7 inches is not that big when compared with the ipad´s 9.7 screen, in my opinion you need the extra screen real state for a better experience. I dont mention the mini,s screen because the nexus one runs it over with its resolution.

But if going for the regular sized ipad I think iOS excels
Click to expand...

Screen wise I think Nexus 10 is has a bigger screen size which is 10 inch and a 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution with 300 ppi.
Also price wise Nexus 10 is cheaper compared to iPad read more comparison here.

Code: 
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ipad-vs-nexus-10-vs-surface/
 
kristalsoldier

kristalsoldier

macrumors 6502a
Aug 10, 2013
818
523
nancyfromafrica said:
Screen wise I think Nexus 10 is has a bigger screen size which is 10 inch and a 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution with 300 ppi.
Also price wise Nexus 10 is cheaper compared to iPad read more comparison here.

Code: 
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ipad-vs-nexus-10-vs-surface/
Click to expand...

True. But being an owner of the N10 and the Surface RT, I can tell you that the aspect ratio is the biggest problem. This is the reason I am buying an iPad4 today.
 
H

hagr182

macrumors regular
Apr 6, 2010
192
29
nancyfromafrica said:
Screen wise I think Nexus 10 is has a bigger screen size which is 10 inch and a 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution with 300 ppi.
Also price wise Nexus 10 is cheaper compared to iPad read more comparison here.

Code: 
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ipad-vs-nexus-10-vs-surface/
Click to expand...

The OP referenced the nexus 7, not the nexus 10.
 
B

Bilalo

macrumors 6502
Aug 17, 2012
402
2
Oxford, England
Southernboyj said:
This is a question directly mainly at college students.

In 3 weeks, I will be returning to my University (I'm in the US) for fall semester.

Do any of you use your iPad for eTextbooks? I've never bothered with even looking into this, but now I'm really interested.

How easy is it to find an eTextbook that you need? And does it save your much money? I already have an iPad 3.

Google just announced an eTextbook service and I'd consider getting a Nexus 7 also if they have more availability.

Any insight is appreciated!
Click to expand...

Theres an app called Boundless for iphone, don't know if its on ipad but if not u could just download iphone version and put on 2x. It has quite a lott of uni books :)
 
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